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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29364198">forever and always</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwaoist/pseuds/iwaoist'>iwaoist</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Haikyuu!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Commitment Phobia, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Reconciliation, aran has commitment issues, i'm calling this a character study, sometimes it's about nearly breaking to bandage yourselves up better than before, this is aran's testament to the greatness of kita's character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 04:48:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,039</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29364198</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwaoist/pseuds/iwaoist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Kita and Aran have a fight, and Aran does some heavy introspective reflection.</p>
<p>Inspired by Taylor Swift's Forever and Always - "Was I out of line? Did I say something way too honest, and make you run and hide, like a scared little boy?"</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kita Shinsuke/Ojiro Aran</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>50</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>forever and always</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>All Aran knows is that the argument is his fault. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He doesn’t remember how they got here — or rather, he doesn’t want to.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I don’t know what spooked you, Aran, but I don’t like that you’ve completely shut yourself off from me.” The look of resignation on Kita’s face is what hurts him, a blade pressed neatly between his ribs into the pounding, fleshy mess of his heart. “It’s not my job to <em> fix </em>you. I’m your boyfriend, not your parent—so if you can pull your head out of the sand, that would be nice. Until then, I’ll be at my grandmother’s house. There’s leftovers in the fridge.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The front door closes, and it isn’t loud, but the sentiment is deafening — Kita is gone. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>---</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Casting his mind back, Ojiro Aran isn’t sure when it starts. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>That nagging feeling, the restlessness — he’s familiar with it, from being shifted around from place to place as a child, his parents’ careers choosing the town they would all call home for the next six months or so. Aran always got this ache in his stomach when he knew they would be looking for a new job, a new city, a new country. He can’t blame them — he knows now that he’s old enough (and willing enough to care) that they are academics, and their field of research took them around the world, but he can’t help thinking that it would have been nice to have been able to have some sort of stability. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>They never really set down roots, it seemed, until Aran started high school. Sure, he had finished out middle school in one place — but it wasn’t until Aran was fourteen that they decided that they really <em> liked </em> the place they were in. Aran thinks about how the house they’d chosen, the one they still live in, is the first place they’d ever planted seeds in the flowerbeds — they’d made a physical testament to their family in the earth, rather than feeling like it was going to be a waste when the moving trucks arrive.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It was a blessing and a curse that they had chosen to stay, if Aran thought about it. He could make friends, wouldn’t have to worry about leaving, wouldn’t have to think about packing up their life into the back of a van. On the other hand, he constantly felt like he was waiting for a sign they’d changed their mind, like the rug was going to be pulled out from underneath him at any moment — he had to be ready to land on his feet. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Aran has talked about this before — with his friends, at 2am over badly-rolled joints, or with his therapist, in her always-too-cold office. He remembers Osamu saying that he lived like a man on the run, that he could make a home for himself anywhere and leave it just as quickly as he found it. He supposes Osamu’s right, but he also supposes it would be nice to be able to grow used to his surroundings. Aran wants to let the roots of the earth grow over his limbs, keeping him settled in one spot forever, but it’s like every time a shoot approaches him, he rips it out of the ground without a second thought. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He wants to build that garden with Kita — like his parents <em> eventually </em>did in the village they now call home — he knows that for sure. He wants to grow each plant from seed, meticulously watering them — he knows Kita would have a strict routine to keep their growing buds of life at the peak of their performance, and he thinks that’s one of the reasons he fell so easily for him in the first place. Kita is by no means a coddler, but the way he makes everyone around him want to be their best, want to work harder, want to care for themselves — it’s magic, and Aran isn’t entirely convinced that Kita isn’t descended from one of the old fox gods that Kita’s grandmother told him about. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Aran, always slow on the uptake when it came to self-awareness, didn’t realise that he was the one poisoning the water while Kita carefully maintained the greenhouse of their relationship. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He’s alone in their apartment, surrounded by the life that Kita had built for the two of them, and he realises that all these things — these parts of him that make him want to run and hide — they’re all connected, and the burden of them has been resting on Kita’s shoulders for as long as he can remember. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Kita, always waiting for him. </p>
<p>Kita, always nudging him onwards. </p>
<p>Kita, always there to catch him when he fell. </p>
<p>Kita, always there to patch him up when he felt like he was breaking. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Is it fair for Aran to put that strain on him? He doubts it, but he has still done it anyway. He supposes that was what he’d been doing the whole damn time — loading up Kita’s arms with each of his problems, until he can’t see the man he loved anymore amongst the pile of rocks that constitutes his issues, and he is left alone to deal with the problems he has created.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>---</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em> “Does my honesty offend you, Aran?” </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The words hadn’t been said maliciously, Kita isn’t that type of guy — yet each syllable slices through the careful bandages wrapped around his pride. It pains him, and Aran aches to retreat into the darkness and lick his wounds clean, whimpering and wounded. He hates the silent resignation in Kita’s eyes, the way it seems like Kita already knew that this is how it was going to play out.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Their argument replays in his head over and over, even though it isn’t really an argument at all. Kita is the one voicing his feelings, trying to communicate, and Aran (for the millionth time) just stands there. He knows holding his tongue isn’t what either of them needed him to do, but what is he supposed to say?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em> I’m sorry, please don’t leave me. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> I understand why you’re frustrated.  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em> I can’t do this. </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>All of the options are wrong, but somehow the silence is worse. Kita has gone, and it has been days of no-contact between the two of them. Aran knows that Kita isn’t doing it to hurt him, but he would be lying if he said he doesn’t see the irony in his pain at Kita’s total silence.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It’s wholly unnatural for Aran not to talk to Kita — for the best part of ten years, they’ve spoken everyday, whether it be in person, when Aran would roll over and kiss his boyfriend awake in the rosy-tinted mornings, or over text, like in high school. Even over video call, when Aran had accepted an offer to play overseas for a season — no matter the distance or the obstacles in the way, Kita has always been the first person Aran speaks to in the morning. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Yearning is something Aran is used to — yearning to win, yearning for a stable home, yearning for a sense of direction — but never yearning for Kita. He hadn’t needed to — Kita had given Aran his second button the night before graduation, stole a kiss as sweet and awkward as possible, and that had been that. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Thinking about it now, Aran notices that Kita is always the one to spur them on further. Kita always takes their first steps, pulling Aran along at his side, and stays patient enough to slow his pace so Aran can comfortably walk with him as his equal. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Aran wants, for the first time, to run — he wants to feel the free wind rushing past his face, a bronco freed from its saddle and rein that could sprint for miles, and miles further still. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>But, despite what the dark cesspit of worry tells him,  Kita isn’t the worn old rope that keeps him leashed to the field. Kita is the lush green of the fields, stretching for miles under his feet and providing him with the security and solidity to run wild and free. He needs a little maintenance, like any greenery, but doesn’t he deserve it? Doesn’t Kita deserve to be treated with all the grace Aran could muster? Doesn’t he deserve to be treasured? Above all, doesn’t Kita deserve to have the same courtesy extended to him?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Aran hasn’t been sure, until now, that he can provide that for Kita. Or that he wanted to. But the idea that Kita — unwavering, unflappable, <em> unforgettable </em>Kita — is drowning in Aran’s anxieties is almost more than he could bear. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He laces up his shoes, tying both bunny-ears with a care he isn’t used to — he usually rushes through getting ready to leave home, but there’s something about this that makes him appreciate every act, every moment. He’s careful. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>It has never taken long to reach Kita’s grandmother’s house. Part of the reason they lived where they lived, why Aran’s team was fairly local to the area, why they hadn’t ventured off into the wide world around them — it’s because family, and all that entails, is important to Kita. Aran considers, right then, if he’s part of Kita’s family. It’s a big step, something they haven’t discussed — but thinking about it now, it’s even stranger to say that Kita isn’t part of his family, when he’s his lover, his next-of-kin, his closest friend — all in one neat package with a shock of dyed hair. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Aran stands on the front porch of the farmhouse, mulling over what to say — he isn’t <em> good </em> at these things, you see, not like Kita — and it strikes him that this is never going to be salvaged by the words that leave his mouth, no matter how carefully chosen. Instead, his actions are how he needs to demonstrate that he’s <em> ready </em> to be the one that Kita deserves. Because Kita, <em> his </em>Kita, deserves the world, the moon, the sun, the stars — Aran might just reach up and scoop them out of the sky for him, if he could. An act of devotion so grand would still hardly be enough to show Kita how he felt. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Kita joins him on the porch — it isn’t a big deal, no dramatic verbal sparring — and honestly it feels like Kita has been waiting for him to show up. Kita is always ahead of him, in that way too. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Aran.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Hm?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Say what you need to say. It’s cold out, and you didn’t bring a jacket.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em> Oh, </em> he thinks. <em> I didn’t </em>. He wonders how Kita always notices these little things. His voice is measured as Aran offers his opening statement. “I’m not going to apologise.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I didn’t think you would.” Kita sits back in the wooden loveseat, looking out into the thick woods that almost encroach onto the porch. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Not because I’m not sorry,” Aran continues, his gaze tightly locked on Kita’s knee — there is a tiny hole in the old pajama bottoms he was wearing, and Aran thinks about how much he had missed the simple ease of their close proximity at night. “But because I have to show you I’m sorry, instead. There’s no point me offering you words you won’t believe, when I can show you instead.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Show me? Show me <em> how </em>, Aran?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Aran takes a deep breath, steadying himself as his fingers dance on top of his own thigh in a tango of tension. “I want you to move back in. I want to show you I want this, just as bad as you. I want to be the man you deserve, the one who matches your pace and never leaves you floundering, y’know?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I know,” Kita says, voice even. Aran thinks that he really does — Kita has a knack for understanding him better than anyone else. “And in time, I think it’ll work. But—” </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Kita cuts himself off, training his eyes on Aran’s face. He looks exhausted, like he hasn’t slept properly in days, and it makes Aran’s heart ache. Kita’s voice is smaller than Aran remembers it ever being. “But I can’t do this alone.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I know.” Aran replied, earnest and easy. His hand raised up, reaching to take hold of his boyfriend’s cheek in the dim evening twilight. “You won’t have to. Not anymore.”</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>hey, feel free to come find me @bluenimi on twitter. &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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